Warren Buffett Quotes

Great investors need to have the right combination of intuition, business sense and investment talent.

A decade ago, I really did believe that the average investor could do it himself. I was wrong. I've come to the sad conclusion that only a tiny minority, at most one percent, are capable of pulling it off. Heck, if Helen Young Hayes, Robert Sanborn, Julian Robertson, and the nation's largest pension funds can't get it right, what chance does John Q. Investor have?

Don't play games that you don't understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.

I'm often asked how to start investing with little or no money. Please hear this as this is the hardest thing for people to understand: you do NOT invest with money! You invest with your mind! No matter what the field, your biggest asset is your mind. Once you have knowledge, you find deals, find your team and use other people’s money. You sell the deal and your team to get investment money.

There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don't understand, but that doesn't cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that's what the individual investor should do.

I'm not sure at all that I'm any good at this mentoring/investing business - that's why I'm using my own money, and that's why it's not a career.

What you pay for an investment is the single biggest determinant for how successful that investment will be. When equity prices are high, your returns will be lower. When they are cheap, your returns will be higher.

My father, being a Scotsman, taught me to look after finances. I'm shrewd. Some people may call me tight.

And I trusted someone to look after me on the business side of life.

I didn't buy Bentleys. I didn't live large. I invested in me. I invested in a lot of other people.

The venture business is a bit of an apprenticeship business, so the firm I worked for didn't let me make an investment until I was 30. That was probably a very smart thing.

Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.

Investing in a poker game and investing in stocks, at least the way I do it, it's a very similar skillset.

I never heard of anyone saying they want to deploy their capital wisely and go buy a sports franchise. What you want to do is just not lose money. You see, I don't have to work anymore. I tell people I don't have a real job. On the other hand, I learned long ago that you can't go broke if you turn a profit.

It turns out that Donald Trump has been very good at buying low and selling high, and it helps account for his amazing business success.

Investing is not nearly as difficult as it looks. Successful investing involves doing a few things right and avoiding serious mistakes.

I wouldn't finance a fad if I were a banker.

One of many strengths that I often see in successful women on Wall Street is a responsible balance between risk taking and risk mitigation - the ability to assess situations smartly and make the right medium-to-long-term decisions without being lured into reckless, short-term profit-taking.

At one point, I recognized that Warren Buffett, though he had every advantage in learning from Ben Graham, did not copy Ben Graham but, rather, set out on his own path and ran money his way, by his own rules... I also immediately internalized the idea that no school could teach someone how to be a great investor.

Well, the most important thing in investing is to know what you're investing in, and if you're confident in the outcome, it's important to stay true to your position.

Ultimately, we measure ourselves on the success of our investments.

Paradoxically, when 'dumb' money acknowledges its limitations, it ceases to be dumb.

The average result has to be the average result. By definition, everybody can't beat the market. As I always say, the iron rule of life is that only 20% of the people can be in the top fifth. That's just the way it is.

The deeper one delves, the worse things look for actively managed funds.

Investing is not as tough as being a top-notch bridge player. All it takes is the ability to see things as they really are.